Syrian Girl, the Australian activist, Youtuber, and social media powerhouse, tweeted on Thursday evening (EST) that her Facebook account has been blocked for her exposure of fraud during the Kurdistan referendum. She had 75,000 followers.

She gave Russia Insider (RI) an exclusive interview on Friday, explaining that Facebook acted without warning, (which is unusual - usually they give people a chance to correct whatever is upsetting the censors), and so far have not responded to emails.

This of course follows the evidence-free beat-up that alleged Russian interference somehow caused American voters to elect Russia's allegedly favourite candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton the chosen favourite of the American corporate elite, including Zuckerberg himself.

Mark Zuckerberg's claims this week that Facebook was fair to Donald Trump during the 2016 election just took another serious blow.

The Facebook founder and CEO personally met with Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta a year before the 2016 election, according to an email released by Wikileaks.

The news comes a day after Wikileaks' Julian Assange dropped a bomb onto the heads of Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, alleging they colluded with Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign.

Assange Tweeted Thursday, linking the emails sent back and forth between John Podesta and Sandberg which reveal Sandberg wanted Clinton to win "badly." Assange said the women met privately numerous times during Clinton's campaign.

Assange included one email from Sandberg to Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, which is particularly damaging in which the Facebook executive pledged to help elect Clinton.

What can we do about it?

This outrageous attempt at thought control and censoring of political information by Zuckerberg, as well as Google, YouTube and Twitter, shows that in a true democracy, the news media upon which we all depend, must be taken out of the hands of the corporate owners and placed in the hands of the people.

Alternatively, rival newsmedia and social media that are run transparently, and with a charter to promote a free contest of ideas, should be established.

This could easily be done with public funds and with popular support within purportedly democratic countries like Australia, France, Germany and the UK. Should this not occur, then alternatives could be set up. One such alternative is the community-owned minds.com.

Another alternative is for sovereign countries like Russia and Iran, which are independent of United States' hegemony, set up their own alternatives to Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. If they were also run transparently and with a charter to promote a free contest of ideas, they would very quickly draw away much of the current audiences of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Such an initiative would surely cost those countries only a fraction of what they are currently obliged to spend on defence.

In fact, Russia has already set upYandex an alternative to Google. Hopfeully, Yandex will soon be expanded to include more in English. Hopefully, also, other alternatives to Google, Facebook, and Twitter will soon be established.

Over time their need for defence expenditure would be greatly reduced as more and more people in Western countries are able to see through the lies of the corporate newsmedia. We could well see the end of war altogether.

Comments

The Syrian Girl's FakeBook FaceBook video, deleted by the FaceBook thought police, has been re-posted on Russia Insider's FaceBook account. I attempted to embed the video below, but our Drupal content-management system was not able to render the video. To Watch Syrian Girl speak, see "YouTube Bans SYRIANGIRL's Video About Her Facebook Ban - for 'Hate Speech'" (3/10/17) | by Charles Bausman.

Are you on the hunt for a good Facebook alternative? While it may seem like a daunting task, you can rest assured you’re not alone. Whether it’s because of hidden AGBs, data protection issues, or platform rules and regulations – the reasons for finding an alternative to Facebook are common and more and more users are looking to avoid the Californian social media giant. The market for similar networks is massive, and there’s a large selection of platforms ready to accept Facebook’s digital refugees. In our guide, we’ve already introduced some of the biggest and most important social media platforms around.

But regardless of whether you’re using Twitter, Instagram, or Google+: Awareness and consideration about privacy and data protection are also important factors in choosing to use any of the other social media giants. One common complaint targeted specifically at Facebook is that that Facebook Newsfeed algorithms decide exactly what you do and don’t see. Another problem is personalized advertising, which is of course only possible through accessing and interpreting personal user data. As you can see: the list of criticisms for the social network market leader is long. So it’s good news that there are a few other alternatives to Facebook on the market. Some of these Facebook alternatives offer less advertising, others offer improved data protection, and some even offer extended functions and features that aren’t currently available for Facebook customers.

The best alternatives to Facebook: an overview

The platform Diaspora is a social world online that puts your data back in your own hands, according to its own slogan. Its range of functions is similar to those of Facebook. Users can publish status updates, share posts and images, and comment on other people’s posts. And just like on Facebook, you can control who gets to see your own posts as well. Diaspora uses hashtags to order posts, meaning that you can use these to find like-minded people who share your interests. Linking Diaspora to your Facebook profile is also possible, and the software has its own chat function. Diaspora is also an open source project.

One of the main features that Diaspora prides itself on is its decentralization. This is to do with its technical background: the platform consists of many different networks, known as pods. User data isn’t collected and stored centrally by the provider, instead the infrastructure is distributed by users themselves, with data carried by these so-called pods. If you have good technical know-how, you can actually operate your own pod, which essentially functions as a server. This means that you can be certain that your private data remains private and in your own hands. Less technically gifted users can use ‘open pods’ in the network instead.

With a little over 60,000 new users joining in the past 6 months, Diaspora is certainly only a very small drop in the ocean compared to Facebook. But its decentralized system and the control over your own data that comes with it makes Diaspora a definite option for users concerned about data protection. Lastly, Diaspora is completely ad-free.